The Final Touch

Love the mes­sage here — and in the spirit of the sea­son, I’ll for­give the miss­ing apos­tro­phes! But it’s just a good reminder that EVERYONE can use a proof­reader!! Merry Christ­mas from Final Touch Proof­read­ing & Editing!

Oh, I knoooooowwwwww… I’ve been remiss about blog­ging for waaaaaay too long! This is how I’ve always been with jour­nal­ing, too — off again, on again, always hav­ing a hard time keep­ing at it faith­fully. I like jour­nal­ing — the idea of it, that is — the con­cept of record­ing my thoughts to look back on later, espe­cially thoughts about faith and life, prayer con­cerns that I can see answered in ret­ro­spect, ques­tions I’m pon­der­ing, that sort of thing. But the only time I’ve kept at it steadily has been when I was trav­el­ing. I faith­fully recorded my expe­ri­ences in Nor­way daily for two weeks the sum­mer before my junior year in col­lege. No, two weeks isn’t much to brag about, but then I also faith­fully jour­naled (maybe not every day, but reg­u­larly) through­out my five months in Spain dur­ing the spring of my junior year in col­lege. That, I think, was the last time I faith­fully kept a jour­nal. So, no big sur­prise here that think­ing of some­thing to write about and mak­ing a point to do it every few days for the sake of my blog does not come eas­ily to me. So, my apolo­gies. But since I’m here now…

I’ve decided to start some­thing new and make a series of it — maybe a once-a-week sort of thing; we’ll see. As a copy edi­tor, and a fanat­i­cal one at that — one who can’t turn off her proof­read­ing brain, even after the client-based work is done for the day — I am often not just annoyed but appalled by the errors I see “out there.” Now, because my aim here is not to shame any­one — and since, after all, I wouldn’t have much of a free­lance edit­ing career if every­one had the gift of excel­lent writ­ing skills — and because whereas I have strong writ­ing skills, oth­ers have busi­ness or math or sci­ence or par­ent­ing skills I will never have — I will not reveal the iden­tity of a writer, busi­ness, book, etc. with whom/which an error is asso­ci­ated. What I want to do is to turn these fre­quent nerve-shredding nui­sances into some­thing pos­i­tive. So, every few posts, I plan to use a real-life sen­tence or phrase or some other snip­pet of writ­ing I’ve seen as a demon­stra­tion of what the cor­rect con­struct should be and why.

So, here goes. This is a com­mon error in ordi­nary, casual con­ver­sa­tion as well as in writing:

“It con­tains a story about my hus­band and I!” No. “It con­tains a story about my hus­band and ME.” Why “me” instead of “I”? Here’s a help­ful trick: Take the prepo­si­tional phrase (“about my hus­band and…”) and omit the object of the prepo­si­tion that is not the pro­noun in ques­tion. Get rid of it so you can focus only on the pro­noun. Now try it both ways: “It con­tains a story about I” or “It con­tains a story about me.” Clearly, even in casual con­ver­sa­tion, we would say “me.” So, too, should you choose “me” — an object pro­noun, it’s called, whereas “I” is a sub­ject pro­noun — when there is another object in the phrase as well: “It con­tains a story about my hus­band and me!”

Another post sooner than later… I promise!

Oh, and if you see an erro­neous gram­mar or punc­tu­a­tion con­struc­tion “out there,” please men­tion it in a com­ment below. I’ll do my best to explain what’s right and what’s wrong, and why.

photo © 2005 JP Esper­ança | more info (via: Wylio)

This morn­ing, I took the time to fol­low a few Face­book links posted by peo­ple I know. Each took me to a piece of fine writ­ing recently posted in cyber­space. The arti­cles are quite dif­fer­ent from one another, but what they all have in com­mon is the high cal­iber with which they are writ­ten. I’ll pro­vide links to the arti­cles — as well as to two other exam­ples of fine writ­ing I came across recently — at the end of this post.

Some peo­ple are not con­vinced that the qual­ity of their writ­ing — cor­rect­ness of punc­tu­a­tion, accu­racy of spelling, smooth­ness of sen­tence flow, and so on — really mat­ters. “Peo­ple know what I mean!” groused one writer for whom I used to proof­read. “And if they don’t get it, they’re not the kind of read­ers I want read­ing my stuff any­way.” Well! Read the rest of this entry »

The fol­low­ing video pretty much speaks for itself. There are vary­ing view­points about whether an edi­tor should post his/her rates on a blog/website, but some of you have a gen­uine need to know, and your ques­tions gave me a great oppor­tu­nity to try out using video as a way to answer ques­tions. It was fun to do, though the learn­ing curve (at least for me) was a bit steep! Par­don the imper­fec­tions! (I do like, and I hope you will as well, the “inten­tional imper­fec­tions” of the Ani­moto* back­ground I opted to use — I think they make the whole thing artsy and fun!)

Oh, by the way, for those of you who don’t know me very well yet, the fact that my eyes dart back and forth is NOT because I’m speed-reading cue cards! It’s because I have a con­gen­i­tal con­di­tion called nys­tag­mus that affects the mus­cles of my eyes. Sorry it doesn’t look like I’m mak­ing eye con­tact with you!

Please let me know if you have any fur­ther ques­tions about how I might assist you with your writ­ing. And remem­ber: not just books; I’ll be glad to help with ad copy, school papers, resumes, let­ters, and more.

I invite you to view this and other videos on my YouTube chan­nel, “Final­TouchEdit.” If you find some­thing you like there, please click “Like.” I’d also love to hear from you, so please leave a com­ment here and/or on YouTube. And if you know some­one else who might be inter­ested in learn­ing about my ser­vices (or in see­ing the dar­ling cat video on my chan­nel!), please pass the links/URLs along to them. Thanks!

* http://​cmp​.ly/5

‘I’m so con­fused!’ Photo by brain­loc on Stock​.Xchng​.com

For some rea­son, a lot of peo­ple are con­fused about when to use “it’s” (with the apos­tro­phe) and when to use “its” (with­out the apos­tro­phe). One of them is a con­trac­tion, the other a possessive.

If nuances of good writ­ing make you feel some­thing like the fel­low in the pic­ture above, you are not alone! But take heart! I’m about to lend a help­ing hand.

Some­one sug­gested to me that maybe the con­fu­sion comes about because it has been so ingrained in us that pos­ses­sives use apos­tro­phes, so we tend to assume “it’s” is the pos­ses­sive. Well, per­haps. But don’t for­get words like these, which are pos­ses­sives with­out apos­tro­phes: hers, his, yours, ours, mine, theirs. All these words are called pos­ses­sive pro­nouns. And guess what?! So is its! There is no apos­tro­phe in any of them! Look at the fol­low­ing examples:

“Did you take her books or ours?”

“Nei­ther. I took his books. You don’t have yours?”

“I only have one of mine. All I found of my math book was its jacket, so Jim and Lana let me bor­row theirs.”

“Its” is the pos­ses­sive pro­noun replac­ing “the book’s”: “the book’s jacket” = “its jacket.”

But notice the dif­fer­ence here:“It’s time to get to school.” In this sen­tence, “it’s” is called a con­trac­tion because it “con­tracts” or pulls together the two words “it” and “is.” The fol­low­ing con­trac­tions are also famil­iar to you — and note their apos­tro­phes: don’t, won’t, can’t, doesn’t, weren’t, aren’t, and more. Remem­ber­ing these con­trac­tions will, I hope, help you to remem­ber that “it is” also calls for an apos­tro­phe when con­tracted (or, as I like to say, smushed) into “it’s.”

One final point: NEVER EVER is it cor­rect to write its’. Never!!

Was this punc­tu­a­tion tip help­ful? I’d love to be your GPS (that is, gram­mar, punc­tu­a­tion, and spelling) nav­i­ga­tor for other quan­daries you’d like assis­tance with. The first five peo­ple to post ques­tions which are cho­sen as the topic of future posts will each be awarded 15 min­utes of proof­read­ing as a free gift from me (that’s a $5 — $10 value or more, depend­ing on the pro­fes­sional and the type of work needed) as my thanks!

Do you have an ad, a let­ter, a blog post, a resume you’d like proof­read? I look for­ward to your ques­tions and sharing!

‘Sweet Son’ by Dori­ana at stock.xchng

“Mom, I’m sad…,” my five-year-old began.

Good gra­cious! I thought. It was only 7:05 in the morn­ing; what could he pos­si­bly have to be sad about? But that was just what flit­ted through my mind in a frac­tion of a sec­ond because he con­tin­ued before I could even ask.

“…because summer’s over,” he said plaintively.

Well, it did feel that way two days ago when we awoke to 40-degree tem­per­a­tures breez­ing in through the win­dows we’d left open to the almost-60-degree air the night before.

“Oh, honey,” I assured him, “summer’s not over yet. It’s just cool this morn­ing, but don’t worry — it will warm up again today.” And indeed, it did. In fact, they’re pre­dict­ing temps in the 90s this weekend.

But life is full of changes, isn’t it? Ups and downs, cool­ing and warm­ing, and hints of things to come before they fully arrive.

In our house­hold, we are presently mak­ing school-supply lists, pur­chas­ing shiny new ten­nis shoes, arrang­ing for back-to-school doc­tor appoint­ments and (don’t tell him yet!) shots. The new school year — and, yes, my child, fall — is coming.

Per­son­ally, I look for­ward to being able to ded­i­cate stead­ier hours to my proof­read­ing and copy­edit­ing work, and to bring­ing YOU more great tips and resources to strengthen your writ­ing. I look for­ward to my kids redis­cov­er­ing the joys of learn­ing from ded­i­cated teach­ers, of renew­ing old friend­ships and mak­ing new ones, and of being engaged in a more cre­ative mix of activ­i­ties than this mom has ever man­aged! (Me? I cre­ate with words — not so much with paint and nature walks and mak­ing up fun out­doorsy games!)

Sea­sons change. Most tran­si­tions are a mix of happy and sad. For now, I’m glad my kids are squeez­ing the last bit of joy out of sum­mer and look­ing for­ward — at least, pretty much — to fall.

How about you and yours? I’d love to hear your thoughts!